Sermon for March 30th

Sermon for March 30th

The story that we call “The Prodigal Son”, is one of the most well known and oft preached texts in all of scripture. We have all heard the story of the beautiful love that is showed by the father first to the younger son, who demands his inheritance and then squanders it. He is left with no recourse but to go back to his father and encounters the unthinkable, absolute love and forgiveness.

The father then shows the same love and forgiveness to the older son, who throws a snit because his father didn’t cast out the younger son. The older son, full of self-righteous worth, can’t understand why his father would be so lenient. And yet, despite his temper tantrum, the father offers his love, forgiveness, and considerable mercy to his oldest son.

This text has been picked clean of its most salient points over the years. And why not? It’s a passage that abounds with grace and speaks well to the nature of God’s love and how it is a love that will always welcome us home.

So, how do I say anything particularly new in the face of all the different versions of sermons and devotions and bible studies that have involved this text.? How do I give you a new twist or a different perspective on something that we know all so well? This text is so popular that I think it once decorated the wall of my favorite burger place.

But perhaps not having something new to say on this is not a bad thing.

Maybe, in a world where so much is changing and so much good seems to be forgotten, we should be reminded of the truths that a text like this speaks to.

1.    If the father figure is indeed God, then we know that God will always love us. Please, take a moment to hear that and to truly internalize that. God will always love you. You were made in love. God sustains you in love and nothing can separate you from God’s love. There may be seasons where we don’t feel as connected to God, but that doesn’t mean God has gone away. God is always waiting, just as the father is waiting. And God’s love never ceases, no matter how long God may have to wait.

2.    Just as we hear that God loves us, we have to recognize that God loves everyone else in the same way. That is the radical nature of God’s love and how it can shape us. If we truly embrace the idea that we are loved, for all our weaknesses and failures, then it means that everyone is loved in the same measure. Everyone. Too often, we find ourselves like the older brother, shaking our heads and judging anyone we don’t think is worthy of love. But that is not our place. That is not our task. Our task, like the father, is to embrace the lost and welcome them home.

3.    Let both of those points really sink in. You are loved. Completely. Everyone else is loved. Completely. This is the cornerstone of who we are as Christians. Everything else comes from this indelible fact. All that we do, all who we are, comes from these roots. God loves us all.

As we approach Easter. I think we need to keep these things in mind. This reality of God’s love is what drives Jesus to do what he does for the sake of the world. It was love that drew him to the cross. It was love that broke the bonds of death and brought Jesus out of the tomb. It is love we celebrate during the great love festival of the Triduum and Easter Sunday.

I offer to you part of sermon by Nadia Bolz-Weber on this passage. She, as she always does, puts a beautiful spin on the text.

There is much talk out there about the strength of God and the mightiness of God and the awesomeness of God.  But what of the vulnerability of God?

That God would breath into dust and create us in God’s own image….that God would bring humanity into being as God’s own beloved children was to leave God’s self vulnerable to a broken heart in a way nothing else could have. What a risk God took creating us. Giving us enough freedom to be creators and destroyers.  Giving us enough freedom for us to make a mess of everything and act as our own Gods and to also trust in God and love each other.

I just wonder if this is what Jesus is telling us about in the parable of the Prodigal Son.

I’m now going to continue last week’s theme of preacher confessions and confess to you that until this week I totally thought the word prodigal meant returning having repented of your wrongs.  Or at least I thought prodigal meant coming home after having been independent and stupid for awhile.  I’m sure you guys already know this, and that I’m the only one to have just discovered it, but the word prodigal actually means Spending resources freely and recklessly; being wastefully extravagant.

I’ve always heard this parable, one of the most famous stories in the Gospel, titled the Parable of the Prodigal son.  But out of everything we could say this story is about – why do we say it’s about the wasteful extravagance of the younger son? Why is that the focus when it’s not even that interesting?

I mean, It’s actually common for young people to leave home, waste their lives and their money for awhile until they have no other option but to come home to the parents they didn’t treat very well when they were leaving in the first place. Maybe we make this a story about the wasteful stupidity of the younger son because it’s a story we are more familiar with than the alternative, which is this: if the word prodigal means wasteful extravagance, then isn’t it really the story of the prodigal father?

Isn’t it wastefully extravagant for the Father to give his children so much freedom?  Isn’t it wastefully extravagant for the Father to discard his dignity and run into the street toward a foolish and immature son who squandered their fortune? Isn’t it wastefully extravagant for the father to throw such a raging party for this kind of wayward son?

But, see, I love that kind of grace.

I personally love that Jesus tells this story of the prodigal father in response the to Pharisee’s indignation that Jesus would eat with tax collectors and prostitutes because, when it comes down to it, give me a church filled with awful sinners over a church filled with pious Pharisees any time.

Some of us might find the grace the father shows to the younger son to boarder on offensive, but the thing that really gets me in this story is how wastefully extravagant the Father is toward the older son.  The kid who never left him.  The one who has always done everything right.  The kid who is clean cut and went to college right out of high school and came back to work in his father’s business.  The kid who always signs up to do jobs at synagogue but resentfully notices all the slackers who show up and never help at all.  The kid who feels entitled. The kid who can’t stomach going into a party to celebrate the return of his screw-up of a brother.  I can’t stand that older brother even as I cringe at the ways I may be a little bit like him.  You know what’s wastefully extravagant in my book?: the fact that the Father says to that kid “all that is mine is yours”.

What risk God takes on us. Children who waste everything in dissolute living.  Children who begrudge grace being extended to people who so clearly don’t deserve it. But this is a risk born of love. God risks so much by loving us which is why, tonight anyway,  I prefer calling this the Parable of the Prodigal Father.

Because it is here we see that your relationship to God is simply not defined by your really bad decisions or your squandering of resources.  But also your relationship to God is not determined by your virtue.  It is not determined by being nice, or being good or even, and I struggle with this, but it’s not even determined by how much you do at church.  Your relationship to God is simply determined by the wastefully extravagant love of God.  A God who takes no account of risk but runs toward you no matter what saying all that is mine is yours. Amen.